and everything we've lost disappears
by Vagrancy
Summary: Staring at Shinji, a thousand pictures of destruction flash across the red of her eyes. 24 Eva drabbles spoilers for series & EoE. Violence, disturbing content, nongraphic sexual situations.


**1. lost carol**

"I'm very bad at this," Shinji says, simply, and his hands, they're dry and sticky with rosin. He holds the cello between his knees, and his feet, the heels of them pump up and down, fast.

"I don't care how bad you sound!" Asuka shakes a bottle of nail polish beside her ear, her knuckles white around the glass cube. "Just play something, it doesn't matter what. I haven't heard _real_ music since I got here."

**2. you're not here**

"I hate him." All his arms and legs pulled in, close to his body, Shinji turns his SDAT player's volume way up. The music so loud he can't hear his own voice, Shinji asks Misato, "What kind of person just abandons everything they have?"

"A stupid one who doesn't know what he's missing." She runs a red light and says, "But don't tell him I said that I said that."

**3. float up from dream**

"Were you having a bad dream, Rei?"

She's six-fake-years-old and waking up from her first nightmare, and Gendo's placing one gloved hand on her head. Him smiling with the love and acceptance he can't show his own son, he says, "Nightmares are merely caused by errant electrical impulses in the brain. It's nothing to worry about. None of what you saw in your dream was real."

Rei, she rubs her eyes with her tiny fat fingers and nods. What she dreamed about, it was thousands of her, all of them bloody and torn apart. What she dreamed about, according to Gendo, was all lies and didn't mean anything, could not, would not ever happen. She trusted him so much back then.

He stands up, his hand still on the warm crown of her head. "Good night, Rei."

"Good night, Father." She reaches up and puts her sweating hands over his.

**4. end of small sanctuary**

Toji, the first time he visits his sister in the hospital, he doesn't even open his eyes.

"Hey, sis, how're you doing? Have they been treating you okay? Because, you know, if you're having any problems, I can fix those up for you really quick…"

Her little body, it's dwarfed by tubes and machinery. She's covered with bandages and only semi-conscious, her little pierced ears hearing nothing over the ocean-wash of blood on her brain. All of her, burned red and black.

Toji, he keeps his hands on his lap, and stares at them. His hands have calluses, fight marks, and he knows that these are the hands of his father. The hands of his grandfather. He's only fourteen, but he knows that the grooves in his palms, they're from generations and generations of hard workers.

"Sis, if that stupid—if that dumbassed Eva pilot had known what he was doing, if he really protected people like they said he would, you wouldn't be like this. But I'll get back at him, I swear, and you'll be back home really soon! That's a promise, understand?"

He closes his eyes again, and reaches out to touch her. His hands are rough on the skin between her bandages.

**5. breeze-in monochrome**

The end of the world, it all feels so anticlimactic. Everything falls apart in just seven days.

The grand unification of the Human Instrumentality Project, everyone is each other. All of them one consummate being without pain, without an original thought, everyone's dead, but no one gets to rest.

Rei's body is torn apart and gigantic around them, and no one moves. Everyone is quiet. It starts raining, some LCL-orange and red acid precipitation, and it's still so hard to believe it's all over.

This is Third Impact. This is Revelations, carried out in real-time, and the two of them are the only ones left alive.

"I think I'm starting to scare myself," Shinji whispers, and his hands tighten themselves around Asuka's throat.

**6. sickness unto foolish death**

Speaking into the dark, Shinji says, "I don't have the nerve to kill myself, so I figure that the most I can do is to listen to everyone around me." His hand clenching and unclenching against his stomach, he whispers, "I don't really have the nerve to do anything."

"Shut up," Asuka hisses, and, in the dark, her voice, it's huge. "Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?"

**7. clockwork little happiness**

"Can you just stop being the martyr for once?" She fists her hands on his collar, and shakes him, hard.

"I don't mean to, Asuka." Shinji fingers the buttons of his shirt into their holes. "You just always have to be the most of everything. You're either the best, or you're the worst, but you've always got to be the victim."

Asuka, her hair and her plug suit, they're both as red as lips.

"No, I just have to be the most miserable girl in the whole world, and it's all your fault!"

**8. please love me once more**

"Are you saying that I never meant anything to you? Are you saying…are you telling me you were just using me the whole time?"

"That's right, Ritsuko."

"I'm sorry."

"It's too late to try and make me feel something now."

She folds in on herself, her cheeks red and mascara-stained. Gendo leaves.

**9. a stray child**

Rei is a multitude within herself. Staring at Shinji, a thousand pictures of destruction flash across the red of her eyes. He watches her, watches them.

"I am only one of many."

She reaches out to touch him, and in her eyes, a thousand carbon copies of herself reach out with her. "You are my father's son," she whispers.

And Shinji backs away. Rei's fingertips brush over his chest, and he whispers back, "What are you talking about, Rei? Y-your father?"

**10. innocent moon**

"I probably sound really lame, but sometimes, I make blueprints for ships that could fly me up there." Kensuke, he reaches up, and points one finger toward the moon. The tall grass blows around them, and Shinji asks, Really?

"Mmhm. I think of rockets, and things like the Evangelions that are capable of flying. Wouldn't that be cool, Shinji? To walk on the moon?"

"I guess so."

Kensuke fists his hand, makes a motion like he's grabbing the moon. The curl of his skinny-fingered fist, it blocks out the moonlight. He smiles. "That's a little far off, though. It's probably a whole lot more exciting to pilot an Eva than to walk on the moon, don't you think?"

"It's not that much of a good thing." Shinji rolls over, and he can feel the ground's dampness seeping into him. "Actually, you get tired of it pretty quickly."

"No way! I don't think I could ever get tired of piloting something like that and saving the world. You don't know how great you have it, Ikari."

Shinji sighs. "If you say so."

Kensuke drops his hand, and the moon, it shines bright down on the both of them again.

**11. maternal heart**

"It's going to be okay, you hear?"

Shinji, his legs spread across the bed, he has his head pressed hard against Misato's chest. She has her arms wrapped around his middle, her fingers touching the soft spots between his ribs, and he's too tired to fight back. His mouth moving against the thin material of her shirt, he says he's just so cold.

Misato moves to bury her hands in Shinji's hair, and she tells him that it wasn't his fault. That there's no reason for him to be upset about what he's done.

Shinji flexes his right hand, his fingers curling and uncurling. "I could feel him crush into piece, Misato. He just—his body collapsed so easily. Like he was just so weak." What he doesn't say is: and he told me_I_ was the fragile one.

"Would you rather Kaworu had lived and everyone else died? He was an angel. He could've caused Third Impact, you know that."

"No, I wouldn't have wanted that, but…"

Misato squeezes his shoulders, hard. "Then you don't have anything to feel sorry about. You're still alive, and you're going to keep living. That's really the only thing that matters, Shinji."

**12. letter from the lost days**

He finds the letter in Rei's room, sandwiched beneath her bloodstained mattress and the cold concrete. Everything she owns, all of it smells like death.

"Hey, Rei, what is this?" Shinji holds up the old yellowed paper, the perfect penmanship black ink smeared and rippled from exposure.

_To my dearest Yui—_

"It's nothing." Rei takes the letter from him, gingerly tugs it from between Shinji's fingers before he can read it. Already, it's too late, but she tucks it back beneath the bed. "It is only a letter from a friend."

**13. dance with night wind**

"I took dancing lessons when I was in college last year," Asuka says. Kaji's hands on her waist, she's wearing one of Misato's strapless black dresses. It barely covers her ass, it's so short, and she has to keep her elbows pulled in against her sides to keep the dress from slipping off her breasts. "All of the boys wanted to be my partner, you know."

"Really?" Kaji spins her around on the balcony, smiling. Asuka kicks her foot out and nearly knocks over her thin-stemmed glass of champagne. He knows how to treat women, especially how to treat Asuka, so he decides against telling her that she shouldn't wear stilettos, ever.

She relaxes her arms, and the dress slips lower on her chest, so low that the swells of her breasts are hardly covered. "Let's stop for a while, okay, Kaji?" Asuka, she leans forward and presses herself against his chest.

His heartbeat, it speeds up, for sure, when she does this. Asuka, she swears she can feel the rapid thud-thud-thud of it against her cheek.

**14. never forgive me never forgive me**

And every single dream is just like this.

"All humans try to defile themselves in Adam's name, until they become so bad, so far from their pure original states, they can no longer blame themselves for anything that happens to their world." Kaworu, he stretches, and his neck is a gaunt expanse of white skin. He rolls his eyes to one side, and says, smiling, "I hope you are an exception to that, Shinji Ikari."

And the moment the angel's arms pull Shinji close, Kaworu, he turns to nothing but ripped skin and gore. His crushed ribs and collar bone prodding into Shinji's chest, Shinji sobs, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh god, I'm so sorry." Over and over, he says this, and what's left of Kaworu just keeps bleeding onto him.

And every single dream is just like this.

**15. prayer**

"We're all just our own gods, so you just have to believe in yourself! You got that, Shinji?

Toji swings his legs over the railing, and sits on the edge of the roof. From where they are, they seem so high up.

"I guess I understand."

"Say a prayer to yourself, as an example. I'm not letting you go back to class until you do."

"I believe in myself. There, is that good enough?"

"Say it like you mean it, this time."

"That's going to be hard."

**16. walk on vanity ruins**

"Someone lived here once, you know?"

Their feet crunching against the broken window glass of some flattened house in a town they ruined, they're walking the perimeter of Eva Unit 01's huge footprint.

Asuka picks up a bloodstained teddy bear, its cloth arms ripped and leaking stuffing. "I was never young enough for stupid things like these," she says, and throws it back on the ground. Shinji smiles. They keep walking.

**17. I want love**

"Ikari-kun, I think you should leave now."

The doll parts of her spread out beneath him, she doesn't smell like anything.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know."

Working down her thigh, there's a thin trail of semen. She closes her legs and turns over, his hips still hot against her ass.

It's quiet.

**18. head no.2**

The Evangelion lurches forward; its battery supply and power backup, both of them are long dead.

"I'm going to die," Shinji tells himself. "I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die." Death, it's the one thing he can't run away from.

Without anyone telling it to, the Eva tears the angel limb from limb, and it's so covered in blood, Shinji can't even see. He vomits, and Evangelion Unit 01 just keeps ripping. Its joints are clogged thick with angel skin.

"I'm going to die. I'm going to die, I'm going to die I'm going to die—"

**19. memory of the waters**

_"Your mother was sick, Asuka, and that was the only way she could make herself feel good. She's all better now."_

_"No! That's a lie!" Her tiny baby-fat hands curled into fists, she spits in German, _"Mein Mutter war nicht krank!"

_Mother's skin was blue, her neck stretched and thin and bruised. The doll, it hung from the ceiling fan beside her, its head half-covered by one of Asuka's flowered bed sheets._

_Her father splintered the gate and kicked in the front door the day they left. Asuka, she didn't care. She hadn't cared about anything in what seemed like forever._

Her lungs, she thinks they have to feel wet and cold, pumped full with all that LCL.

**20. rain of brass petals**

The air, it's thick and dark with smoke, and it burns his throat every time he inhales.

Shinji, his arms crossed behind his head, every nerve in his body is telling him to run. To move. All of that survival instinct bullshit, that fight-or-flight adrenaline nonsense Asuka tries to drill into his head, it's saying that every part of him should be up and running, telling him to get out of there, fast, before he's killed.

His face is cut up and covered in so much blood, his eyelashes are matted down against his cheeks. Through the slits between his swollen eyelids, he can barely see, but he can smell, and he can taste, and he can feel. It's all blood, the coppery taste of LCL, all acrid smoke and the too-close lick of hot flames, but he just can't bring himself to get up.

He's spent so long telling himself he can't run away, it's hard to think of anything that would make him run. Shinji, his face feels so hot and sore, but he tells himself that it's time to stop being a coward and face up to death.

In the background, he can hear the loud wail of sirens, and parts of his Eva and embers just start falling from above. His shoulder burns where they hit, and his heartbeat speeds up, but Shinji, he still doesn't move.

From the ground, the sky is just so empty and quiet and beautiful, and Misato's shouting, "Shinji! Move your ass!" He turns his head to look at her. Against the concrete and sheet metal, her high heels sound so loud. She digs her nails into his wrists just as the roof collapses.

**21. flower crown of poppy**

"Ah," speaking over his answering machine, over Asuka's twentieth message, Kaji asks, "have you ever considered the effect the end of the world has on a teenage heart?"

Misato folds her legs to cover up a run in her pantyhose and says, "Not really." Misato, she opens another can of beer and tells him, "It's not like it can make being a teenager any worse."

"Why so bitter, Misato? I knew you quite well when you were just out of being a teenager, and you seemed very happy."

"You didn't know me well at all, then."

**22. sun**

"I'm better now." She stretches her hands over her head, and her breasts pull up into perfect little handfuls beneath her hospital gown. Shinji looks away, and her hair shines bright in the sunlight. "Word of honor, Shinji, I'm better now."

**23. uneternal sleep**

The night before they find her, Asuka cuts off her eyelashes. Lying in a bathtub of stagnant bloody water, Asuka, she breaks her fingernails back, deep into the nail bed. Her and her nothing-special life, her and her zero-percent synchronization rate, all of her is just worthless garbage. A waste of oxygen. Asuka, now that she's not better than anyone, now that her Eva, the one thing that was supposed to accept and obey her forever and always, has rejected her, there's no reason left to live.

The water wrinkling her pale, disgusting trash skin, she crushes glass against her palms. She thinks of tearing out her now too-wide eyes, so she never has to see her useless, ugly self again.

She thinks of Shinji, and she thinks of sex, and she hopes that they will never find her, and Asuka, she hopes that she's barren, that her piece of shit ovaries won't let her make more useless lumps of flesh like herself.

The skin beneath her fingernails bleeds and bleeds.

**24. hometown**

The night after he dreams of his old life, Shinji tells Asuka, "You know, I've always wanted to read a news article about something awful, but at the end, it would say, really, the victims were all okay. Really, it was all just a bad dream, and they're fine now. That car crash, or plane crash, or angel invasion was just a nightmare. No one died, because it was all only a dream. I…I really would like to read something like that."

"What you mean is, you wish your life would end up being some stupid dream, right?"

"Well, kind of." Back home, he never feared death. Before all of this, the scariest thing to him was just being forced to face himself.

"Only an idiot would think things like that could actually happen." Asuka, she runs her fingers through her hair, and sighs. "Believe me, I know that there are no such things as happy endings."


End file.
